Saturday, May 4, 2013

Kayeong Kim / Intellectual Property / Tue 9 a.m.

Intellectual Property is one's personal assets and it is interesting that we can never see its shape. It covers almost every sector such as literature, arts and scientific technology. Since we don't regard it as a product, it is hard to value it. The problem of intellectual property comes from this reason. It is in our mind and head, we cannot figure out who first had this. I mean the border is ambiguous.

I agree that there are many pros for protecting intellectual property much stronger. They argue that it is also one's property and we should respect their hard work – mentally hard work. And sometimes it seems they couldn't be paid properly. First, we cannot judge their efforts by their outputs. Second, many people think mental activity is just for self-contentment. I understand those arguments from both sides. However my point of view is different.

First of all, I would like to express my personal opinion in intellectual property. I think today's intellectual property is overestimated. In my opinion, we need to develop much balanced rule or law for protecting intellectual property. It is unfair that one hit song or one essay could afford one person's entire life by its royalties, while others need to work till they become old and weak. I don't want to say they didn't do their best. I just want to say it sounds weird that metal labor has much value than manual labor.

It is because the law tends to protect intellectual property too much. The law needs to be standard and minimum way to adopt it everywhere. So it cannot capture a butterfly effect of a certain intellectual property. For example, a famous singer Psy, he introduced 'Gangnam Style' and it became a global song. So he has get love calls from advertisement companies. He earned a great deal of money and his royalty of song is not to mention.

I would like to mention that the song has other benefit that can be change into other valuable things. I do not mean that we need to share everything because of that effect. Rather than that, I think we need to systemize to value intellectual property much accurate way. It is hard to capture, but it should contain the butterfly effect also.